Most of you have no doubt heard of Alexander Graham Bell. Who was he? He was known as the man who invented the telephone. Before him was only the telegraph, in which a person listened to a series of long and short pulses, and deciphered letters from it. Of course, that wasn’t around for more than a couple of decades before the telephone was invented by Bell. So, in the space of a few decades, mankind went from communication between two distant people taking weeks, months, or even years, to being able to communicate voice-to-voice instantly with someone on the other side of the continent or the world. That is quite a wondrous change for people living in that time period – the last four decades of the nineteenth century.
What many of you probably don’t know are the many interesting facts surrounding and concerning Alexander Graham Bell. And the life lessons each of us can learn from the life of Bell.
A Little Background
The first interesting fact is this – he did not have a middle name, “Graham,” until he was 11 years old. At that time, his father allowed him to adopt “Graham” as his middle name in honor of a family friend, Alexander Graham.
Another thing you may not know about him is the fact that he was not born in the United States. He was actually born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1847, and lived there with his family until he was 23 years old – in 1870 his family moved to Ontario, a province in Canada. It was mostly here and in Boston where he did much of his research that led to the invention of the telephone.
Alexander and his brother Melville built a “talking head,” which was something that had its own larynx, windpipe, throat, skull, and face. This project was able to create the word “mama.” Bell did this when he was about 16 years old. After delighting neighbors with their creation, Bell moved on to trying to get his dog, Trouve, to talk, eventually getting it to say “How are you grandma” with the use of his fingers to manipulate the dog’s mouth while the dog growled.
Life Lessons Learned From Alexander Graham Bell
For most of his life, Bell was involved with deaf people, even teaching at several deaf schools throughout his life. This includes schools in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. His main subject was trying to help deaf people learn to read lips, and be able to communicate verbally, something his family called Visible Speech. Bell’s mother became deaf when he was younger, and he eventually married a young deaf woman he was tutoring. It’s his skills with the deaf community that was one the things that helped him when it came to developing the telephone. Don’t you ever forget that it’s things from your normal life that push you onto the path of success.
It was a misunderstanding of what was said in a technical writing by a German that led Bell to believe it was possible to create not just vowel sounds electrically, but consonant sounds as well. If Bell had truly understood what the writing was saying, he would have never pursued developing the telephone. In other words, no one told him it was impossible and couldn’t be done – don’t let anyone tell you that your goals can’t be done.
Bell could not have pursued research and development on the telephone without the financial support of a couple of wealthy individuals who did so because they believed in Bell, and hoped to make money on the invention once it came into being. And, this is exactly what happened – after Bell was awarded a patent for the telephone and started the Bell Telephone Company, these individuals became more wealthy, and Bell became wealthy also. Just remember that most successful people did not get there on their own, but by enlisting the help of others. This will mean that you will need to learn to socialize better, explain your thoughts and ideas better, and be able to persuade people to your point but view, if you want to enlist their help.
After acquiring patent rights to the telephone, Bell went to court over 500 times in the next 20 years because of challenges made to his patent rights. What can we learn from this? That once you become successful, there will always be those who try to destroy you or steal your success. You must always remain vigilant.
These are several life lessons that we can learn from the life of Alexander Graham Bell. Apply these lessons to your life, and it will put you closer to the path of success.
